I'm with you on this. Apple might skip USB3 all together, just like Blu-ray.
Never going to happen. USB 3.0 is going to be incorporated into the core chipset. It will be as unavoidable as Intel IGP is in the current core i-series processors that Apple uses.
Lightpeak is
NOT going to be incorporated into core chipsets for a long, long, long time; if ever. It is never going to be cheaper than USB 2.0 so it will never go into low end devices. USB sockets are not going away even if Lightpeak gets Firewire like adoption rates. USB 3.0 has probably reached its peak speed. It hard to pass FCC class B rules and go faster than where it is at now. Lightpeak will get increasingly faster. That will keep it out of core chipsets because its appetite for more and more (or faster and faster) PCI-e lanes will make it hard to put into a chipset and drive the costs down.
Lightpeak promisses to be much better and should become available in the next few months (as said by Intel). So why go to USB3?
1. It is less expensive for the peripheral vendors to impelment.
2. Ditto for system vendors.
3. It is already through 1st gen implementations and on 2nd gen next year.
4. It is backwards compatible with 100's of million (if not a billions ) devices that people already own.
5. The new, separate super speed USB bus makes it suitable many of the speed , low latency , and isochronous workload that Firewire is used for.
The issues where Lightpeak is "better" is.
a. speed. going over 5Gbps.
b. longer distances (if they do
not saddle it with copper and power. That's a bonehead move. )
I don't buy the "does any possible protocol for almost free" sales pitch.
Apple is not about short term hype, they'd rather go for long term tech if you'd ask me.
Apple not about hype. That's a chuckle.
USB 3.0 is anything but hype. It is a update to a standard that was 8 years in the making and 2+ years in the deployment.
If anything is hype it is Lightpeak. By some reports it solves everything. It jumps over tall buildings in a single bound. It might even cure world hunger. .... A single plug for absolutely everything. ...... that's not hype ??????????????? Not even Intel, if you press them, says it is good for everything.
In future it is extermely likely you could endup witha Mac with both USB 3.0 and Lightpeak. Just like there are Firewire and USB sockets now. Right tools to the right job. Not everything is a nail so you always use a hammer.
In the greater than 5.0Gbps market, Lightpeak will be a dominate force (at least on mainstream commercial boxes). In the less than 2.0-3.0Gbps market, USB will very likely be the dominate force. USB 3.0 helps USB squeeze out FW and eSATA out of more places. For example, you'll see those USB/eSATA combo sockets fade from the market. The kind of drive interface performance folks were getting out of those sockets can be done without the non-standand combo. For really higher speed connections to larger, faster disk systems you may see lightpeak take more traction if the overhead and costs are affordable.
In the end they have to many different ports on one machine to be compatible to everything where Apple will have only a few ports for the (what they think of as) better long lasting technologies out there.
Apple is far more likely to kill off Firewire than toss USB . Lightpeak will likely squeeze out FW; not USB.
